LSE Cities New Urban Governance project: New Essays

Announcing two new short essays: “Urban Governance in Europe: Competition, Self-reliance, and Innovation” and “Governing China’s ‘Urban Revolution’”

From scholarly work to political discourses, the massive attention directed to cities nowadays is undeniable. But are cities well-equipped to lead world transformations? The two new short essays of the New Urban Governance (NUG) papers series focus on the cases of Europe and China. In his essay, Jon Pierre addresses the new institutional choices, strategies and emerging new ways of governing the city in a “multi-level” Europe. He argues that urban governance in the EU is to a large extent characterized by three features: intercity competition, increasing self-reliance in economic terms, and a strong emphasis on innovation in governance and service delivery. The essay on urban China, by Mee Kam Ng, briefly describes three decades of urban reforms, which included both decentralization and recentralization processes. Mee Kam argues that China’s future success is highly dependent on how well the nation and its people will govern the ongoing “urban revolution”. You can also find previous essays by Gerald Frug, Edgar Pieterse and Isher Judge Ahluwalia in the NUG project website.

Essay Authors:Jon Pierre is a Research Professor in the Department of Political Science, University of Gothenburg and Professor of Public Governance at the Melbourne School of Government, University of Melbourne. He is also Adjunct Professor at the University of Pittsburgh.

Mee Kam Ng is Vice-Chairman of the Department of Geography, Director of the Urban Studies Programme, Associate Director of the Institute of Future Cities, and Associate Director of the Hong Kong Institute of Asian Pacific Studies, Chinese University of Hong Kong, China.

Please click here for more information about the NUG project or contact the Project Coordinator, Nuno Ferreira da Cruz, at n.m.ferreira-da-cruz@lse.ac.uk.